The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)'s attempt to
redouble its efforts to increase activism in inner city neighborhoods was an
important aspect of this phase. The cornerstone of the period, however, was the
radicalization of SNCC through its Atlanta Project, which was an attempt to
encourage community control and to fully exploit electoral and economic
opportunities. The goals and tactics of groups and individuals involved in this
era were far more direct and assertive than ever before.

Community organizing takes on new life

Community organizing for improvement of conditions in Atlanta's African American
neighborhoods was not a new phenomenon. However, in the mid-1960s, grassroots
leaders emerged and built on that tradition. SCLC fieldworkers such as James
Orange and Tyrone Brooks used strategies developed in the organizing of rural
black communities to help spur activism and receptivity to SCLC programs within
Atlanta's inner city neighborhoods.
The voter education, literacy, and black history programs initiated by the
Citizenship Education Program (CEP) were viewed as major components in that
process. The Voter Education Project (VEP) of the Southern Regional Council
supported some of these activities. Later, community organizer Ella Mae Brayboy
implemented innovative programs in the city to specifically empower women to
deal with the challenges of motherhood as well as overcome spousal abuse and
unemployment.

Growth of radicalism

SNCC's Atlanta
Project took shape as racial rebellions in the Dixie Hills and Summerhill
communities expressed the frustrations of black youth who felt they had not
benefited from the civil rights movement. Bill Ware directed the Atlanta
Project, and the perspectives and goals he brought to it were a clear departure
from the perspectives and goals previously adhered to in the civil rights
movement. The Atlanta Project had a Pan-Africanist orientation, that is, those
involved in this initiative believed that people of African descent spread
throughout the world share a common history, culture, and experience and should
work together to bring about positive change in the world. Unlike SCLC, this
group did not place a premium on racial integration and began to question the
role of whites in black organizations. All of these factors were a departure
from the gradualism associated with
Atlanta's civil rights history. In
time, the Atlanta Project not only radicalized the
Atlanta branch of SNCC, but the
entire organization. Significantly, it was SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael who
picked up Atlantan Willie Ricks' call for Black Power during the 1966 March
Against Fear from Memphis,
Tennessee, to
Jackson,
Mississippi.

The Atlanta Project also provided the basis for attempts to achieve
community control in African American neighborhoods.
Vine
City offered a proving ground for the
community control process. Student and neighborhood leaders would first assess
the problems in the community -- which might range from inadequate governmental
services, poor educational opportunities, a need for economic development, and
issues with the police -- and then the community would be organized. The
organization's efforts, however, were not limited to the specifics of the
community; rather, the Pan-Africanist perspective placed community issues in a
global context. The assessment and the organization were then used as a basis to
formulate solutions, which were often issued as demands, to various public and
private entities that had responsibility for the specific problems.
(Carson, 192-198)

The separatist
orientation of the Atlanta Project repeatedly ran counter to the national SNCC
leadership. Finally, national director Stokely Carmichael fired or suspended the
entire Atlanta Project staff. Still, in time, the radicalism initiated in
Atlanta permeated SNCC nationally.
One of the outcomes of that radicalization was that SNCC provided the foundation
for the creation of the African Liberation Support Committee in the 1970s --
groups throughout the country that had the goal of supporting African liberation
struggles in countries like
Angola,
Mozambique, and
Guinea-Bissau.

The
reconsideration of the role of whites in black organizations was a natural
outgrowth of the nationalist and Pan-Africanist perspective that prevailed
during this era. SNCC invited white members to leave its organization and to
concentrate on educating white
America about
the evils of racism. This purge created considerable personal and organizational
challenges since many white members of SNCC had literally risked their lives in
the cause of civil rights.

Political power grows

The ongoing
efforts of Atlanta's black
leadership to educate and register black voters were beginning to pay off in
this period. As noted above, in 1965, 11 African Americans won election to the
Georgia
legislature. That same year, businessman Q.V. Williamson became the first
African American elected to the Atlanta Board of Aldermen. And, in 1967, Julian
Bond was finally seated as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. It
seemed that African Americans in
Atlanta had firmly grasped political
power.

Assassination of Rev. King and continuing change

Then the assassination of
the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. shook Atlanta and the world in April 1968. Many questioned the political, social,
and economic gains achieved over the past three decades; asking whether they
were true victories or just ways to distract and delude African Americans into
believing they finally had achieved equality?

As a new civil rights institution attempted
to address such questions, two of the city's oldest civil rights organizations
pushed ahead to keep the movement alive. The creation of the Martin Luther King,
Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change by Coretta Scott King in 1968 in the
wake of her husband's death became a mechanism for assessing, preserving, and
continuing the legacy of the slain leader and the movement. The NAACP,
revitalized by Jondelle Johnson in the early 1970s, took on the media and won
a landmark lawsuit against Cox Enterprises which resulted in more African
American personalities on television screens and more blacks in jobs behind the
scenes. Veterans of the movement who had fought side by side with Martin Luther
King, Jr. took the helm of the SCLC and attempted to navigate the organization
through a period of mourning. The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy became president of
SCLC after King's death. Both the Rev. Joseph Lowery and the Rev. C.T. Vivian
also would be crucial to the survival of the Atlanta-based organization and to
keeping it relevant to the broad issues of human rights in
America.

The political landscape for
African Americans in the late 1960s and early 1970s held some disappointments
and affirmations. The election of Lester Maddox as Governor of Georgia
(1967-1971) represented an effort by white supremacists to revive the spirit of
segregation in state government. Four years later, however, newly-elected
Governor Jimmy Carter (1971-1975) declared that the time for racial
discrimination had passed. His administration attempted to nullify vestiges of
the image of
Georgia as a
relic of the "old south" in the realm of civil rights and race relations. The
election of Maynard Jackson as Vice Mayor of Atlanta in 1969 bolstered the
spirits of African Americans in the city. The election of
Jackson as the Mayor of Atlanta in
1973 would make him the first African American mayor in the "deep south" and
affirm the fight for black political strength that had been championed for so
many years by his grandfather, John Wesley Dobbs. Further affirmation of the
power of the black electorate was the 1973 election of former SCLC leader Andrew
Young as the first African American Congressman from
Georgia since
Reconstruction. Although there was still much to achieve, it seemed the 30-year
fight for civil rights in Atlanta
had not been in vain.

This story of Atlantas role in the civil rights movement, along with the accompanying timeline and bibliography, were written by Clarissa Myrick-Harris, Ph.D. and Norman Harris, Ph.D. of OneWorld Archives. Readers for this material include Dr. Vicki Crawford of Clark Atlanta University, Dr. Andy Ambrose of the Atlanta History Center, and Brenda Banks of the Georgia Archives. Editorial changes have been made by ARCHE for purposes of length and style.